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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
As Fragment 46 of the first book of Sallust's Histories Maurenbrecher prints: Magnis operibus perfectis obsidium cepit per L. Catilinam legatum. This he takes in effect to mean that Lucretius Ofella after the completion of great siege works received reinforcements brought by L. Catiline legate of Sulla. The interpretation depends largely upon his contention that the phrase obsidium cepit is to be taken as equivalent to subsidium cepit, for which he claims the authority, ultimately, of Verrius Flaccus as represented by Festus p. 193M s.v. obsidium. Though opinions may occasionally have differed as to the precise event documented by the fragment, this central assumption seems to have gone unchallenged by historians. Yet it rests upon remarkably insecure foundations. The reading cepit has scant authority and the interpretation of obsidium as subsidium (= auxilium) none at all. It is in fact the result of misunderstanding the passage of Festus in which the text is embedded.
In Lindsay's edition (p. 210) the Festus entry which is here quoted in full runs as follows:
Obsidium tamquam praesidium, subsidium recte dicitur, cuius etiam auctor C. Laelius pro se apud populum (i.e. Orat. 9): ‘Ut in nobis terra marique simul obsidium facerent.’ Et Sallustius historiarum I (46): ‘Magnis operibus perfectis obsidium coepit per L. Catilinam legatum.’
Coepit is the reading of the manuscript F, which has been generally accepted, while cepit appears only in the Aldine edition where it may well be an emendation or even an error, there being no obvious independent source which might have provided it. For Maurenbrecher it was merely the ‘correction’ of Corte (1724) who produced the earliest roughly chronological arrangement of the fragments of Sallust's Histories.
1 Maurenbrecher, B., C. Sallusti Crispi Historiarum Reliquiae, fasc. i (Stuttgart 1891, repr. 1966), p. 18Google Scholar.
2 Lindsay, W. M., Festus, De Verborum Significatu cum Pauli Epitome (Leipzig, 1913)Google Scholar.
3 It may be noted, however, that cepit could bear the sense ‘undertook’ or ‘took charge of’, cf. Cic. Ad Att. 8. 3. 4.
4 Plut. Sulla 32. 4; Seneca, De Ira 3. 18; Berne Scholiast on Luc. 2. 173.
5 M.R.R. 2. 72.
6 Römische Studien (Leipzig, 1922), p. 173Google Scholar.
7 Indeed, if we were to deny Ofella this glory we should have to assign it not to Catiline but to P. Cornelius Cethegus who seems to have had a hand in persuading the garrison to surrender (Val. Max. 9. 2. 1).
8 Here see in particular [q. cic] Comm. Pet. 9–10 and Asconius 84 C.
9 The view held by some that a military legatus must be a member of the Senate is also mistaken. On this question see Smith, R. E., Service in the Post-Marian Roman Army (Manchester, 1958), p. 62Google Scholar notes 2 and 3.
It is perhaps worth remarking that Catiline might quite conventionally have held a quaestorship in 81 b.c., if, as seems probable, he had by then completed 10 years military service. The minimum age-limit of thirty, which Cichorius assumed, was of course a Sullan innovation: cf. Astin, A. E., The Lex Annalis before Sulla (Brussels, 1958), p. 43Google Scholar. It is in any case plausible to suggest that Catiline entered the Senate in 81 b.c. He would surely have been included among the 300 or more equestrians and others whom Sulla drafted in that year.
10 Aesernia had been captured by the rebels in 90 b.c. (Appian, B.C. 1. 41). The suggestion that Sulla may have retaken the town in 89 b.c. was made by Brunt, P. A., Italian Manpower (Oxford, 1971), p. 356Google Scholar. This hypothesis is, however, invalidated by App. B.C. 1. 51, and Diod. Sic. 37. 2. 9, who clearly show that Aesernia was still holding out in late 89 b.c.
11 Rossbach, O., T. Livi Periochae Omnium Librorum (Leipzig, 1910)Google Scholar.
12 It may also be noted that it is not unknown for the epitomator to specify the geographical location of coloniae (like Aesernia) in Italy. Thus in Ep. 15 we have Ariminum in Piceno and, in Ep. 19, in agro Sallentino Brundisium.
13 The authors are grateful to Professor D. C. Earl for advice and assistance on a number of points.
